Volunteers help Bureau
of Land Management rehabilitate unauthorized trails

Volunteers from the Sierra Club recently assisted the BLMs Eagle
Lake Field Office in rehabilitating unauthorized vehicle trails in the Dry
Valley Rim Wilderness Study Area (WSA) in Nevada. A dozen workers spent a weekend
using hand tools to break up compacted soil, scattering brush, and scattering
rock. The goal of the work was to encourage natural revegetation by keeping
vehicles off the route.

The volunteers placed
brush and rocks to camouflage vehicle routes that had been pioneered into the
Wilderness Study Area. The work was part of a larger effort to rehabilitate
68 unauthorized vehicle trails that have become established in the WSA. Numerous
other vehicle roads and trails in the area remain open to use.

The Wilderness Study
Areas were designated in 1979 after an inventory process and public scoping
process. WSAs are managed so as not to impair their suitability for Wildereness
designation by the congress. The establishment of new vehicle trails within
these areas is an impairing activity and cannot be authorized by BLM.